Confusion over church donations comes to a head in...

1of16People attend a candle light vigil for the shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs Sunday Nov 5, 2017.Photo: Edward A. Ornelas, Staff / San Antonio Express-News

2of16Joann Ward, 30, and her two daughters, 5-year-old Brooke and 7-year-old EmilyJoann Ward attended the Nov. 5 Sunday service at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs with her four children: Rhianna, Emily, Brooke and Ryland. Emily Garcia and Brooke Ward died with their mother. Rhianna told friends, who then posted on Facebook with permission from the family, that Joann pushed her eldest down when the shooting began. "I didn't get shot because I was hiding, and momma covered Emily, Ryland and Brooke," Rhianna told Family friends. "Ryland remains at University Hospital in San Antonio and has a very long road back to full recovery," according to the post. Friends described the mother of four as a person who showed "dear, special, unique" love and was like a "big sister" within the Sutherland Springs community. Photo: GoFundMe, Facebook

3of16Joann Ward with her daughter Brooke. Both died at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs.Photo: Courtesy photo

4of16The Holcombe-Hill Family: Bryan Holcombe (60), Karla Holcombe (58), Marc Daniel Holcombe (36), Noah Holcombe (1), Crystal Holcombe (36), Emily, Megan and GregCrystal Holcombe, wife of injured John Holcombe, was killed with three of her five children from an earlier marriage: Emily, Megan and Greg. Her unborn child also did not survive. Crystal was a "loving mother and wonderful-hearted woman," her first father-in-law John Hill said. Bryan Holcombe, who filled in for Pastor Frank Pomeroy, died with his wife Karla. They were described as "happy people who never had a negative thing to say" by their friend, Jim Miller. Their son Marc Daniel Holcombe died with the his year-old daughter, Noah, the youngest victim.

Photo: GoFundMe, Facebook

5of16Robert and Shani Corrigan Robert Corrigan was a 29-year Air Force Veteran and he worked at WellMed at The Oaks in San Antonio before he died. He and Shani were Floresville residents, who were high school sweethearts from northern Michigan, according to the Associated Press. Mourning friends who donated to the family via GoFundMe said the two were "wonderful people who had hearts of gold." "Chief Corrigan was such a great mentor and person," another said. "He and his wife mad this a better world."

6of16Scott Marshall and Karen MarshallThe couple had recently retired to La Vernia from Pennsylvania and were trying out area churches. Sunday was their first visit to First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. Karen had just finished an assignment at Andrew's Air Force Base in Maryland. Scott, who retired from the Air Force, was working as a civilian contractor and mechanic at Lackland Air Force Base, according to the Associated Press.

7of16Annabelle Renee Pomeroy (14) Annabelle is the daughter of Pastor Frank Pomeroy and Sherri Pomeroy. Both of her parents were out of town when she died.

8of16Peggy Lynn WardenWarden stepped in front of her grandson, Zachary Poston, as a shield. Her family is calling her their "hero" in an online fundraising campaign. One of Warden's family members wrote on Facebook that she was "blessed to have the kindest person (she) has ever know as (her) sister."

9of16Lula Woicinski White

Church friends told the San Antonio Express-News the last time they saw White was on Friday, in the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs pantry.“She always told me she loved me,” Maria Durand, 78, said in Spanish. “The church has suffered a great loss.”

10of16Friends called Sara and Dennis Johnson "the great couple."

11of16This June 18, 2017, photo provided by Lorena Santos shows her relatives Theresa Rodriguez and Richard Rodriguez in San Antonio, Texas. 51-year-old Richard Rodriguez and his wife, Theresa, were members of the First Baptist Church. Photo: Lorena Santos, AP

13of16Tara E. McNulty, 33, died in the Sutherland Springs church shooting on Nov. 5, 2017, DPS officials confirmed. She is seen here in the middle.Photo: GoFundMe

14of16Click ahead to a list of fundraisers set up for the victims of the Sutherland Springs shooting.1. GoFundMe donations are to be directed immediately to the parish. The fundraiser page was set up almost immediately after the shooting and by Monday evening, more than $23,000 had been raised toward a goal of $50,000.Photo: Go Fund Me

15of162. Smokin' Angels BBQ Ministry is hosting benefit plate sale at St. Mark Lutheran in Adkins on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. All funds from the plate sale, which includes pulled pork barbecue sandwiches, chips, coleslaw and a drink for $10, will benefit the victims and their families, according to a Facebook event page.Photo: Facebook

16of163. Near the First Baptist Church, the Sutherland Springs Community Association was outside the community building on Monday accepting donations from local residents for the victims of the shooting.Photo: Eric Gay, Associated Press

Donors and victims of the November mass shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs have begun to question the distribution of funds from the church leadership.

The questions, sparked by the release of design plans for the new $3 million church, came to a head when Lisa McNulty and her granddaughter, Hailey McNulty, expressed to residents and on a local Facebook group page that they were not getting church funds.

Hailey’s mother, Tara McNulty, was killed in the massacre. Hailey and her brother James now live with Lisa.

Frank Pomeroy, pastor of the church, said there was a lot of “misinformation” that spun out of control.

“It would be nice if people that have confusion, or if they’re worried about misappropriation or anything of that nature, rather than going through Facebook and social media, come sit down and talk to us,” Pomeroy said. “Let’s discuss what’s going on, rather than trying to dig up all these conspiracy thoughts out there."

Others piled on, asking for transparency regarding how much money the church raised, how funds were being distributed, and whether survivors and family members of victims were getting their requests denied. Facebook posts got so heated that at one point the group was “archived,” effectively freezing the page.

“We just want to know how much, give us the amount, and then we want to know how much is left. It’s simple, simple, math. And all you get is a runaround,” McNulty said.

Pat Dziuk, who is head of the church’s Sutherland Springs Restoration Committee in charge of distributing funding, said they had not tallied the total count of donations made to the church just yet, and wants to announce that number to the congregation before he relays it to the media.

Gunman Devin Kelley killed 26 people and wounded 20 others when he opened fire on the congregation with an assault rifle on Nov. 5. Kelley was shot and then killed himself as he was chased from the church.

McNulty and others had wondered why the church can’t just pool all its money and divide it up equally among the survivors and victims family.

But Dziuk said the Internal Revenue Services requires the church use a needs-based system.

“How do you put a value on someone whose been killed versus someone whose wounded? How do you do that?” Dziuk said.

“You may have some victims who have very protracted needs, like Kris (Workman) or Zach (Poston), they’ll have medical expenses for years. Then you have some folks like us, who lost Annabelle,” said Pomeroy, referring to his 14-year-old daughter, who was killed. “And how incredibly sad that is, but we have no needs like they do. It’s not fair for us to take the same amount of money.”

Of the approximately 50 need-based requests from survivors and family members of victims, the committee has only denied one of them, Dziuk said. To get approval, the requests require committee member signatures and “reasonable evidence of need.”

The review takes a maximum of two weeks, though it may have taken longer for some people if they applied and were rejected for funding from an H-E-B account or the Attorney General’s Crime Victims’ Compensation office first before coming to the church.

The needs-based application was only recently “formalized,” as Dziuk called it. Before that, people were sending in requests without an official form.

Pomeroy acknowledged that it might seem like filling out the forms and making requests with differing entities is a lot of bureaucracy, but it’s required by tax law.

The attorney general can provide medical expenses, and sometimes funerals or lost wages, Dziuk said, and the church’s insurance company, Church Mutual, can also help compensate for lost wages.

But Lisa McNulty isn’t worried about lost wages or immediate expenses like paying rent — which is what the church forms indicate. She is worried about James needing braces next year. She’s concerned about Hailey going off to college in two years. How is she going to afford these future, long-term expenses? Will the church be chipping in?

Dziuk said they haven’t gotten to figuring out these long-term needs for people.

McNulty provided the Express-News with evidence of a check that was sent to the church for her, but has not been transferred to her yet.

Dzuick acknowledged there was a check waiting for her, but that the committee had only just finished sorting through the donations and putting them in their designated funding accounts. (There are about three categories, which include an undesignated, general fund; and funds for victims’ funerals, building of the new church, and miscellaneous).

The church has been using Amegy Bank’s lockbox to sort through all of the mail and checks, and then it’s up to the church committee to ensure they get routed into the proper funding pots.

“I know we’re not doing anything illegal or immoral, we’re doing our best to meet needs,” Dziuk said. “We owe that to the donors to be good stewards of the money they sent. So we’re doing our best to do that.”

Funding for the new church and adjoining education center was to come from two sources: the North American Mission Board and a GoFundMe account established by Bradford Beldon, of the roofing company Beldon Enterprises Inc.

The $1.1 million he raised consisted mostly of in-kind donations of services and materials his friends and colleagues had said they were willing to donate. His GoFundMe account raised $219,474 in cash.

When Beldon was informed that his money would be going to phase II of the project — the construction of a multipurpose facility, two years from now — and not phase I, the building of the church, he shut down the GoFundMe page. He said he couldn’t guarantee that the services people offered would be available two years from now.

“There were a lot of people who wanted to help. it’s a shame that … they didn’t choose to capitalize on using that help,” Beldon said.

Scott Gurosky, president of an Alabama firm managing the project, said they chose to separate their work with phases so there wouldn’t be confusion between the two funding streams.

“We thought it was cleaner and easier to separate the giving sources. One is NAMB, and the other is GoFundMe Sutherland springs. So there’s no overlap. And that’s what we did,” he said.

But Beldon said there “was a lot of secrecy” surrounding those decisions, because he was told his fundraising wouldn’t be used for the church construction until just before the Alabama firm announced its design plans, he said.

As for what came of that almost $220,000 in cash, he said some of the victims families were upset they didn’t have access to the funds.

“But there were other fundraisers for the victims. Ours was solely for the purpose of building a new church,” he said.

He used $99,643 to pay off the debt on two acres of property where the new church and center will be built. He then sent the remaining $119,000 to the church under “restrictive covenants” — so the funds would only be used for construction.

Beldon said “it’s a shame” that they couldn’t work on those projects in tandem, but said that’s not stopping his company, Beldon Enterprises, from donating the roofing of the new church.

“We very much wanted to help from the bottom of our hearts, but I completely understand them wanting to do something different. There’s no hard feelings, all we asked was for the opportunity to help them with the project, because we care.”

Silvia was born and mostly raised in Galesburg, Illinois. After high school she took a gap year and spent it in Mexico before pursuing her bachelor’s in English at Grinnell College.

She interned at Minnesota Public Radio and wrote in English and Spanish for the bilingual, Chicago-based newspaper Extra News. In 2015, she won the two-year Hearst Journalism Fellowship and moved to Connecticut to report for Greenwich Time, the Connecticut Post and the Norwalk Hour.

One year later, she moved to Texas to cover education for the San Antonio Express-News, where she now covers immigration. She has also been the lead reporter following the Sutherland Springs community in the wake of the November 2017 church massacre.

She loves breakfast tacos, frequently uses “y’all” in her vocabulary and always has a stash of cascarones at her desk, so it’s safe to say she’s fully embraced the San Antonio way.